Swap file suggestion

[Bluedogruns]

Can't believe I am the only one that has reported a lot of use on flash drives.

I have to tell you for the price unless you live somewhere where they are very expensive you can not go wrong.

I mean how many times do you burn a cd then only want part of what is on the cd. Then you make a new cd with just the files you want and add more. Then if you have anything on the cd's you need to protect such as bank accounts, ss numbers etc you have to be sure you have really destroyed them. In the end with 1 gig units selling under $10.00 each and I have even seen them free after rebate just last week you can't go wrong. First you don't have to have a new one like you do each time your write a cd, that builds up in price. You can not scratch the surface and make them unreadable. You don't have an issue of will the cd drive in someone elses machine actually read my cd. Unlike a portable hard drive if you drop your flash drive or knock it off the table while it is running there are no platters and heads to get damaged, no motors to wear out.

Now this sounds bad but I have read stories where people accidentally put the flash drive through the laundry cycle. Guess what as long as you let the thing dry before you use it, it will usually still work. When I read that I asked Sandisk about this when I was on the phone with them one day and the person on the phone confirmed it. Try that with a portable hard drive.

I can also state from limited but still experience that I have never lost any data on a flash drive going through an airport.

I guess the only real issue with a flash drive is loosing it or erasing something by mistake.

I am a person that hates to spend money, I will milk every last bit of life I can get out of a product (I bought a new vehicle14 years ago and still am not ready to trade it in). I will spend an hour on line trying to save a couple of dollars on a product but I do not even think twice when it comes to spending my money on one of these devices.

Blue

[willhunt]

Has anyone tried swapdwith puppy? (thanks muggins) and if it helps
anyone I removed my pagefile.sys every time I boot linux and windows
makes a fresh one every time it boots no muss no fuss. Maybe puppy
could just make it's swap file name pagefile.sys instead of
puppy.swp then just rm it in the shutdown script M$ will regenerate
the swap next time it boots:)

I think it would just be easier to just remove puppy.swp during
shutdown

[Flash]

I haven't seen this explained to my satisfaction anywhere so I'll just wing it. My guess is the filesystem data, metadata, index, table of contents, whatever you call it, which an OS normally stores on the hard disk so it can find a particular file when it needs to, and know its permissions and so forth, is not needed for swap memory. By design, all any OS needs to know about swap memory in order to use it is the boundaries of the swap space on the hard disk. Nothing needs to be known about the format of the filesystem on the hard disk. Everything that is required by the OS to use that area for swap purposes is generated by the OS memory management and kept only in RAM. As long as the OS doesn't write outside the boundaries of the swap space, it can share that swap space with other operating systems. Obviously, they can't use the swap space at the same time. It's like sharing a bathroom with your sister when you were growing up.

In the case of Puppy writing to NTFS partitions, swap space is a special case because no NTFS metadata is touched when Puppy uses the swap area of the hard disk, and Windows will overwrite anything in that area when it boots. Therefore the chances that Puppy will corrupt a Windows installation by using its pagefile for swap is nil.

Those are just my random thoughts on the subject, constructed from first principles and a little reading, and unimpeded by any real knowlege or experience. I'd be interested to know how close I am to being right.

[PaulBx1]

Maybe have a boot parameter (OK, I'm crazy about boot parameters ) instructing Puppy to use pagefile.sys for swap; then it's on the user whether it causes problems with XP or not.

Actually, I've been lobbying for a NOSWAP parameter for a while for us encrypted pupsave fans, to no avail. If you want a boot parameter you might have to edit the boot script yourself.

Regenerating a swap file every boot probably is going to lengthen boot times, enough to be noticable.

Now this sounds bad but I have read stories where people accidentally put the flash drive through the laundry cycle.

I used to work for a small computer company that would run circuit boards through an ordinary dishwasher at the end of the manufacturing process. These were big boards, about 10x15 inches, full of medium scale integrated circuits. And they weren't cheap either; they sold for around $10k IIRC. As long as no residue is left, you are probably safe. Clothes washers do leave a lot of soap in clothes though; might need to run another cycle without soap, or just dunk the flash drive in clear, hot water for a while.

[Flash]

I repair equipment that is full of aluminum electrolytic energy storage capacitors which sometimes fail by overheating and then exploding like a giant kernel of popcorn, with the amusing sound of a shotgun blast. I rinse out the liquid residue of the capacitor innards (supposed to be mostly ethylene glycol which is water soluble) with a garden hose. The trick is to dry everything thoroughly before applying power. I've never had one come back because of anything that appeared to be caused by spraying it with the garden hose.